


Quiet Death

by Cant_We_Just_Dance



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, George Is Icharus, Life Ruiner Alexander Hamilton, M/M, Metaphors, Newspapers, OR IS IT, Secret Journalists, Whamilton - Freeform, yeah it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 13:56:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13319577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cant_We_Just_Dance/pseuds/Cant_We_Just_Dance
Summary: It had been a quiet death.The kind of death only a heart full of betrayal can allow someone to die.





	Quiet Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ashilrak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashilrak/gifts).



> This is for ashilrak, as a thank-you for the gift exchange last year! I wish her the best of luck in Korea, and hope that this parting gift brings her joy similar to the kind I felt during her exchanges. <3

It had been a quiet death.

Noise, after all, seemed to evade Alexander when inevitability surrounded him on all sides, like lace being cloaked over a wedding gown. Like nighttime reaching out for the sun as evening overtook the sky, its attempts to pull sunlight closer only chasing it even farther away. Sure, distant starlight could scatter itself across the empty sky, caressing the moon as he phased into a mere reflection of himself, but what was the use when the only starlight he needed was that of the sun? The very sun that shone and glimmered onto early morning wet grass, whose smile lit up a room with the brilliance that none could ever seem to match.

He could dance round the moon as though he had no need for such things as breath or slumber. Eyes that held a secret kind of fire never seemed to go out, nor did it burn so fast that it collapsed into a simple memory held in ashes. That was all they had now, though.

Memories and ashes.

When George had first seen the articles, with quotes of words spoken in secrecy and pictures that could have only been taken whilst the subjects were unaware, he had tossed it into the fireplace. The paper had crinkled in on itself, turning grey, then a bold crimson-tinged orange, burning with a fire that he had only before seen in his Alexander. His Alexander, whose name was printed onto the paper clear as day, the tarnished parchment that decreed a tarnished reputation for the man that he’d been so foolish as to give his heart to. For a man who had endured such things as he, Alexander was not like George. He did not take long pauses between declarations, his steps were hurried as though he raced everywhere, and the sides of his hands were always stained with ink. George’s name was that of the accused, in the article. Alexander’s name was that of the journalist who had published the piece.

Since hindsight is 20/20, as it is cursed to be, whenever he looked back on memories of his sunlight, the very day that woke him from a sleep he hadn’t known himself to be trapped in, flame shot through his palms. Not in the way of heated passion, with kisses more desperate than thought through, as he and Alexander had kissed so often. It was the sort of lightning-bolt that shot through one’s forearms and out their hands like how grief wracked one’s body like sobs that George would deny to having ever cried. Similar electricity had laced his fingertips when they were intertwined with Alexander’s allowing him to ignore the burning in his eyes, from the brightness or beauty, he couldn’t quite tell which.

The first time they kissed, George had thought of it as an accident- an anomaly, the kind that only happened when stray bits of the universe found themselves being pieced together in order to create something that they were never meant to be. He’d been working too late, Alexander by his side the entire time, and the office building was dark, save for the singular light shining on in Washington’s office. The taller of the two had spared a glance over at Alexander, as he often did while working with the Earth-bound bit of sunlight, and was almost about to instruct him to head home (a typical request for George to make) when Alexander’s lips collided with his. It was the most beautiful sort of accident that could ever occur, like crashing waves over days that were never meant to have dawned. And were he a wiser man, he would have known that nothing ever happened by accident; especially not when one found himself in the company of Alexander Hamilton.

Whirlwind was not the word for what they were, what the two men had possessed and held so close to their hearts that they felt as though they would nearly burst. It was not a romance to one of them, and it was not an elaborate ploy to the other man. Such things as this are why communication is ever so important in relationships. One person may want different things out of it than the other, and it always ends up being too late when true intentions are revealed through the shattering of heart-shaped glass.

George did not truly wish for the things he claimed to desire so dearly. 

He had no need for detailed accounts of each and every rendezvous he’d had with his love who was in truth only a love to another man. His mind was clear enough without the image of Alexander’s kiss-swollen lips permanently burned into the back of his eyes, stinging enough every night for bitter tears to trail down his cheeks and onto the too-many pillows in the too-empty bed. It had always seemed so much smaller a space when Alexander’s face was buried against the crook of George’s neck, hands holding tightly onto the soft fabric of his nightshirt. How many of those near-silent promises had been lies? With Alexander’s hair half-braided in George’s hands, weighed down by sleep, and George’s eyes half-open, how capable had either of them been to lie? Certainly not George, and not the Alexander that he knew and loved.

But he didn’t know Alexander, not truly. That doesn’t mean he can’t still love him, even if all he loves is the fragment of a memory that is nothing more than a contortion of lies. The real Alexander, the one who had written that damned pamphlet, was not a man who could be content to lay in George’s bed, held close by careful arms. He wanted more out of life. More than a nobody journalist.

Journalists that find no story simply have to resort to making their own.

George’s heart died a quiet death that morning, when the newspaper on his front steps proclaimed on the front page that ‘Famed Lawyer George Washington is Gay!’. 

He had flown too close to the sun.

But he’d do it all over again, if it meant he could have just one more night with His Alexander.


End file.
